The Flesh Cartel #3: Choices

fixated on his bobbing throat. The glass was still half full when he was done.
“My name is Nikolai,” the man said. “But you must earn the right to call me that. For now, sir will do.”
So he had bought him, then. Dougie’s head pounded, but he thought he might be starting to piece the last few days back together. Madame. Auction. Apart or together. Hurting Mat. Horrible little rooms, dark and soundless. Thirst, God, such thirst. Alone. Left to die.
Not anymore, it seemed.
A few days ago, back at Madame’s, he might’ve regretted that. But he’d learned in that stifling tomb that dying could be just as bad as living.
“Are you . . .” His throat still felt so dry. He cleared it, eyes on the water glass, beading with condensation. Not in the desert anymore, then. Not in Vegas. “Are you a m-master, sir?”
Nikolai nodded, the faintest hint of a smile touching his eyes and lips. “After a sort. I’m a trainer. I’ll teach you how to be your best possible self, and then I’ll sell you on to a master who will love you and keep you if you serve him well.”
“But you don’t . . . I mean . . . You seem so kind , sir.”
Nikolai squatted down in front of Dougie and held the water glass to his lips, tipped it back so he could drink. Dougie swallowed eagerly. “I’d like to think so, Douglas. I take no pleasure from others’ pain. I’m not a rapist like those animals at the processing center.” He pulled the glass back—empty, how was it empty already?—and stroked Dougie’s cheek with gentle fingers. Dougie caught himself leaning into the touch, eyes drifting closed. What are you doing, Dougie? Stop it. “I will teach you great pleasure, Douglas. Joy. Satisfaction. Would you like that?”
I’d like to go home.
He knew what he should say, knew what this man wanted to hear—this man who hadn’t harmed him, who’d given him water, who’d touched him with affection. But he couldn’t lie about that, couldn’t pretend he wanted to stay here. The man already had his body; for all that he’d treated it well so far, he couldn’t have Dougie’s mind, too.
“Where’s Mat?” Dougie asked instead.
That flash of disappointment again, but no anger, no retribution. The hand stroking Dougie’s cheek didn’t stop, didn’t get rough. “He’s resting. I’m afraid the last couple weeks have been quite hard on him.”
“Can I see him?”
Nikolai shook his head, features sad, like it genuinely pained him to keep Dougie and Mat apart. “I’m afraid not yet. I don’t think it’d do to disturb him.”
Dougie nodded, feeling his eyes well up with tears. At least they didn’t fall. “You’re not . . . you’re not lying to me?”
“In this entire process, has anyone lied to you, Douglas?”
No. Never. They promised cruelty and dehumanization, and I got exactly that.
Nikolai didn’t wait for his reply. Maybe he saw it written on Dougie’s face. “Because we have no reason to lie. Lying to keep you compliant would mean we don’t have the power to gain the same through more direct means. But we do. We have all the power.” Somehow that didn’t sound like a threat, like it could have. Just a statement of fact, as bland as saying the sky was blue. “And my particular authority is knowing with certainty that one day, you’ll come to relish that fact. You will be transformed , Douglas. Elevated above your base instincts into the very best version of yourself.”
Dougie didn’t like the sound of that at all . It sounded nuts. Like shit a cult leader would say. Maybe this was a cult. It certainly was organized, and efficient, and everybody knew their place. Top-down hierarchy.
Was he to be brainwashed, then? Broken and reprogrammed? The thought terrified him even more than all that’d come before. Not my mind not my mind please not my mind—
“Don’t look so frightened, Douglas.” Nikolai stroked his cheek again, but this time, Dougie pulled away. Just an inch, just enough to get Nikolai’s hand off him. Nikolai dropped it back to his own knee, face unchanged. Gentle. Paternal , almost, like his foster dad would look at him sometimes. “It doesn’t have to hurt, I promise.” A small shrug then, a hint of gentle remorse, gentler humor. “It probably will sometimes—growing pains, you understand—but it doesn’t have to. You have a choice about that. You’ll have many choices here. But as I told your brother, you must understand that choices carry consequences. Some good, some bad.